Milk Culture of Central Asia

This chapter deals with the milk culture of Turkic pastoralists from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as parts of Central Asia. In contrast to North Asia, very little research has been reported on the milk processing systems of Central Asia. In examining the connection between milk culture and pastoralism in Eurasia, the central region of the continent is equally as important as West Asia or North Asia. Here, case studies from Kazakhstan and different parts of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are first described in detail. These individual case studies, together with studies in the literature, are then compared in order to examine the regional diversity of milk processing techniques and depict the characteristics of milk culture in Central Asia. This series of analyses reveals the strong southern influence of West Asia, particularly around the oases along the trade routes, and the polarization of Eurasian milk culture in northern and southern regions.